Tell Me Makes Free Microsoft Office Apps Easier

If you have an Outlook.com or Hotmail address, you also have access to free web app versions of Microsoft Office that you can access from anywhere. Now Microsoft has added a new feature that makes the apps even easier to navigate. Let’s check it out.

If you aren’t familiar with the Office web apps, it’s not surprising. They are sort of tucked away in Outlook.com. Go your Outlook.com account and select that little drop-down arrow in the upper-left of your inbox.

You’ll see the option to choose Mail, People, Calendar or Skydrive. Choose Skydrive.

Once in Skydrive, you’ll see a + symbol. If you select, it you’ll have the option to create Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote and plain text documents.

I chose to create a Word Document, you can see that it looks pretty familiar if you’re a Word User.

A new feature that Microsoft has recently added is called “Tell Me.” Say I want to take a certain action. I can start typing it in the search field and Word will offer suggestions as to the action I’d like to take. The wording doesn’t have to be exact and it’s easier than searching through help.

Selecting the action applies the action. If I selected “increase indent,” I would increase the indent of the paragraph I was working on.

If I type font, I’ll get a drop-down menu with several option. By choosing Font Color, the menu to change colors appears immediately.

With so many options available in Word, it can often be very confusing to find what you need. I hope Microsoft considers adding this function to future Office 365 updates.